


nor are we forgiven

by tanktrilby



Category: Gintama
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 22:26:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4804484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanktrilby/pseuds/tanktrilby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takasugi taps your forehead with his fingers and the gesture makes you blink in surprise. “Do your wool-gathering elsewhere,” he says with his smile like quicksilver, glinting in the streaks of sunlight. “We are busy men, Zura.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	nor are we forgiven

**Author's Note:**

> This is my suuuper self-indulgent AU, okay. It's based on the flimsy grounds that Takasugi wasn't all radical yet when he first returned to Edo from Kyoto (way back in the Gengai arc) and sought Katsura out to work together, and it heads towards the ot3 when Gintoki (reluctantly) gets involved. It all goes to shit incredibly fast, obviously, but what can you do.

In the morning he catches you by the sleeve of your haori before you leave and waits quietly. You wait with him. It’s an old argument, and perhaps he is as sick of the melancholic script he has to recite as you are. Your parts in this drama are tedious; nauseating, cliché. Maybe he wants to be a real person for once.

He peeks at you through his bangs. He is as beautiful as he is cruel, this friendcomradelover of yours, and you lose yourself in the starlight of his eyes.

“Still an idiot, I see,” he says.

You are struck by a sudden, bone-deep weariness. This is not a soap opera; your roles don’t break on an early-morning whim. You used to be obsessed with these boundaries: one is a samurai, one has honor. One serves his people with his sword, one is true to his master and friends. You are Katsura, and he is Takasugi. These are the absolute rules that you define your world by and they will not wash away from wistfulness, or the longing to kiss him slow and sweet just one more time before it is time for you, Katsura, to face your world.

Instead you pick up your script. The world does not go away and thus you must love despite it and within it, constricted to this narrow space named Katsura Koutarou. “It’s not idiot, it’s Katsura,” you say, and the phantom smile around the kiseru he smokes ( _not so early, Shinsuke,_ says not-Katsura from the other world, free to lovingly pluck the pipe and the exhaustion from his beloved) is enough for you to settle to do what you can in the world you have created.

He taps your forehead with his fingers and the gesture makes you blink in surprise. “Do your wool-gathering elsewhere,” he says with his smile like quicksilver, glinting in the streaks of sunlight. “We are busy men, Zura.”

You tip your hat down. Let that other Katsura keep his lack of restriction, and his beloved content Shinsuke. You are a revolutionary after all.

“So we are,” you say, and turn, but not before letting him see your own smile. “Well then.”

You leave him at his window to start your day.

*

Like Takasugi guessed, you do visit Gintoki. But not after meeting many more men like him—men who fought in the war with you and look for peace with you even now. You are no more of an idiot for making them a part of your daily life as you are to do the same with Takasugi himself. All these good men you know from the war still speak the language you recognize best, and you gather them to you so they can speak it to each other. There is no shame in holding the past close to your heart when it is as rich as yours is, so full of spirits like steel and thunder. In the past lay the roots of the men who were thriving now.

It is Gintoki, however, you visit last, one of the few simple pleasures you allow yourself (Takasugi, being the most complicated bastard you know, obviously does not count among these.) You step into Gintoki’s little world and the peace you feel reaches the far corners of your frayed soul.

“Oi oi Zura, what’s this? Did you chip my window-frame on your way in? You did, you bastard, look at this. How are you gonna pay for this, hm? Am I gonna have to sell your shitty body in okama bars again?”

Face squished between his vengeful hands, you narrow your eyes at him. “It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”

“Like I care!” The ensuing scuffle takes more out of the window-frame than your flashy entrance could. You make sure that most of your blows land on Gintoki than on his surroundings to spare him further maintenance cost. He doesn’t appreciate it, hissing and going for your hair and bringing your good intentions to naught. By the time Shinpachi-kun and Leader arrive, the fight is well underway, and half the flat is demolished.

“YOU IDIOTS,” screams Leader. She picks Gintoki up like a cotton ball and throws him at you, and both of you go down like obedient dominoes. “WHERE WILL WE KEEP THE HOTPOT IF WE DON’T HAVE A TABLE?”

“That’s what you’re worried about?!” wails reliable Shinpachi-kun. He examines the torn-up floorboards. “Gin-san, Katsura-san, if you’re going to act like brats on a playground, please do it somewhere else.”

“I’LL LET YOU DO IT IN THE NEXT WORLD, YOU SHITTY OLD MEN,” threatens Leader, rolling up her sleeves. She has just discovered the upended bags of dog food.

From his ungainly sprawl on top of you, Gintoki flinches. “Zuraaaa,” he moans as his disciples advance. “I’m going to kill you if we die here, you hear me, you stinking terrorist?”

“You’re heavy, Gintoki,” you reply. “Leader, Shinpachi-kun. Violence is not my way. Surely if we join forces it will not be beyond us to find a peaceful solution that will not harm the people of Edo. I urge you-”

“No one cares about that!” Even Gintoki joins in to kick you out of the room, and you fly into the corridor musing on the nature of betrayal, and end up hitting your head on the banister.

From the street below, someone starts screaming about rent.

“You’ve done it now, Zura,” Gintoki groans, stepping over you to scream filthy abuse back at his landlady.

Unheard by anyone -drowned out by the sound of the argument and of Leader cracking her knuckles and looming over you and Gintoki both- you complain, “It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”

And another peaceful day’s work ends at the Yorozuya headquarters.

*

Gintoki insists on supervising your walk back, much to your chagrin. After getting into one more wrestling match, being noticed by the Shinsengumi, nearly being obliterated by the Shinsengumi, and fleeing from the Shinsengumi, the two of you end up doubled over and panting in the back alley below your hideout.

“Why am I running?” Gintoki asks some unseen deity in between pants. “Ah, I should hand this moron over, that’ll get me a reward, right? Gin-san needs to put bread on the table, and he can’t do it if he’s blowing all his money on the damage this idiot does to his flat.”

“A man’s home is his castle, Gintoki,” you tell him, and he twitches all over like a cat, hissing at you. “You ought to take better care of yours, and not let misfortune befall it.”

“You’re the misfortune! And besides, where are we? Where did your addled brain lead us to, oi?” He grabs the front of your kimono and shakes you. You scowl.

“This is my castle, obviously. Though I’ve only been here for a few weeks, so it’s more a renovated mansion.”

Gintoki lets you go. “You live here, huh? Isn’t it, you know, seedier than your usual? What happened to your respectable benefactors?”

 “They’re perfectly fine.” You brush some dirt off the fold of your kimono. “These circumstances can’t be helped. Things have changed, after all.”

Gintoki’s eyes widen -the steel of a blade flashing through them- before he ducks his head to hide his expression. Your blood goes hot and cold at once; you would never run from this confrontation, but this old wound never seems to heal no matter how many times you change the bandages.

The last of the great bridges runs between Takasugi and Gintoki; they’re both poised, torches ready, to burn the crumbling sections that survived the war.

“Ah, I thought I’d drop in for you to compensate me with strawberry milk, but it’s a no-go after all.”

His shoulders are hiked up high and defensive. If you touched him now he’d lash out, though you have no idea why. Gintoki still gets like this sometimes—fierce and feral as if the ghosts of the war still nipped at his heels. You could never ease that burden. It’s not your place.  

“He-”

“He’s no good, Zura, can’t you see that?” Gintoki lashes out and you stare, too stunned to speak. “He may be an old comrade or whatever, but he’s a ticking bomb, why can’t your stupid wig understand that? Why is he staying, if he’s not joining you and he doesn’t have any plans here?”

Your jaw locks. “He was our comrade in the war, and he loved Sensei like we did. Those things have not changed, Gintoki, no matter how much you choose to forget about the past.” This argument is as inevitable as time, but predicting is not the same as preparing. You cross your arms defensively and you barely listen; you are far from strong and stoic when it comes to your two oldest friends. “I don’t plan to judge him on crimes he hasn’t committed.”

“What about the ones he has, then?”

Gintoki’s fury is cold. You’ve never seen him this cold, as if there’s frost in his blood, freezing it over inside his veins. Cold like snow, like the judgment of Shiroyasha’s sword.

“What about your shoulder, Zura? You weren’t using your arm right today. None of that Shinsengumi small fry could do that kind of damage to you. Tell me, Zura. Where’s the limit? Will the past save you when that lunatic’s squeezing your throat?”

“He and I have differences of opinion, and we fight,” you tell him, and his face contorts in ugly triumph. “However, Gintoki, we do the same, don’t we? Wasn’t it Tatsuma who said the closer the friends, the harsher the-”

His posture sags out of its rigid tension. The Shiroyasha is gone, leaving behind a man who looks too old for his years. Gintoki looks battered and exhausted and your very bones ache with love.

“Gya gya gya gya,” he mumbles, waving his hand around. “Shut it, Zura, you’re annoying when you compare me to him. Stop spouting your nonsense and get on with it. Takasugi’s probably waiting.”

“Don’t think this discussion is over, Gintoki.”

“Yeah yeah I know.” He laughs, a dry, sandpapery chuckle. “You’ll be waiting for me to say _I told you so_ when he finally flips and destroys everything, right?”

“And when he doesn’t,” you say, throat tight, “you’ll join us for a drink and apologize for being such an asshole.”

“This goes way beyond positive thinking, you deluded idiot.” He passes you and his shoulder brushes against yours. “Just say the word when you want out.”

The very foundation of your friendship is this: you will be there when the bad times come. You have no doubt that if the baying of the monster inside Takasugi takes him and bares its fangs at you, Gintoki will be there, cutting him down in one quick stroke of hatred. But you have no intention of being saved by Gintoki, any more than you plan to let Takasugi fall. You will carve out your place in this new world away from the battlefield on your own terms.

“Wait,” you tell Gintoki.

“Dammit Zura, what now?” Gintoki wheels around. “If you tell me to go in there and make small talk with that little piece of shit I really will kill you.”

“No, it’s not that,” you say. “Can you give me a leg-up? The window’s really high, and I sprained my ankle falling off this morning.”

*

Takasugi waits, one pale leg raised up from his pooling kimono. “Peace suits the Shiroyasha,” he mumbles, and you tense. “Who would’ve thought.”

He stands up. Under sunlight he is beautiful, but the starlight shines bright and lovely on his hair, his skin, his eye. “Zura, you really are an idiot,” he says. He’s close enough for your clothes to brush in secretive whispers of fabric and for you to feel the burning warmth of his skin where it presses against yours. He touches your face. “Don’t you know? Beasts like that may fall asleep. But they wake up one day, hungrier than ever. What will you do then?”

His kiss tastes of sake and smoke and simmering desperation and none of the sweet things you half-expected. You’re unsure of his motives, and his rage has potential to raze all that you hold dear to the ground. Sensei’s ghost haunts him the worst and sometimes, when he wakes up, he seems to try to see with both eyes before he remembers all he’s lost.

But you have him here, and he is safe. That is what it means to live and love in times of peace. Let your revolution fit the times; let this freedom -coltish and incomplete, yet softer than you could have hoped for- never be broken.

“I am learning to live day by day, Takasugi,” you say, smoothing his hair. “My daily life is a gift and I plan to embrace it. The Bakufu may be corrupt and the people deserve better, but none of the losses are as heavy as they used to be. This may not be the peace we fought for. But it can be the foundation for it.”

He stares at you. A shadow enters his eye -glimmering and mad, bigger than you both, about to take Takasugi from you- and…passes. You are left staring at each other, breathing slow and soft.

“How terrifying, Zura,” he says. His fingers curl in your kimono and his forehead touches yours. “It seems that beasts can be tamed as well.”

You smile. You imagine tomorrow, when he will cast aside his bright affection so that both of you may rage against each other anew. But he will be there, alive and whole, and he will kiss you like he does now, full of want and lingering softness.

You can hardly wait.

 


End file.
